What To Watch For: Las Vegas

This week it’s the Shelby 427. Thanks to Ford generously suggesting 27 more laps, the race now has a built-in “competition caution”. First it was the Aaron’s 499 and now the Shelby 427, but this idea of sponsors dictating race lengths is a little ridiculous. However, I will change my mind when I see ads for the WD-40 at Pocono.

Here’s a quick list of events that will happen this week with our thoughts on the frequency.

Over/Under

The most obvious thing to watch for(avoid?) this week is the terrible Vegas related puns. Gambling on fuel, rolling the dice on two tires, ad infinitum. Over 12

Did you know the Busch brothers are from Vegas? Over 5 (unless there is a prerace feature on the boys’ homecoming, then under 5)

Mentioning the phrase “progressive banking”. Under 4

Driver causing multiple cautions. No driver won this award last week, although some dude named Rain (not Tony) kept causing yellows to fly. This week it’s Scott Speed’s turn to do the double.

The Jeff Hammond Challenge

This week I’d like to introduce a new game to play while waiting for the green to drop. Listen to Jeff Hammond talk about anything beyond the technical realm of racing (where he is very good and knows his stuff), like when he’s talking about who will win or what driver ‘A’ must do to have a good day. Count up the number of cliches and generic phrases. For even more fun, try to guess what he’ll say ahead of time. You’d be surprised how easy it can be. For example: Driver ‘A’ just has to be aggressive, keep his nose to the grindstone and hope to catch some lucky breaks. It’s a long season and you don’t know what will happen before the Chase.

Any ideas for things to watch for during the race? Got any bad Vegas puns to add to the list?